And in doing so, businesses and large enterprises are embracing new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, big data and analytics, and even experimenting with robotics and Internet of Things (IoT).

In fact, the banking, financial and insurance services (BFSI) sector globally, including India is among the early adapters of those new technologies.

Many of the private sector banks and insurance companies in India already have built and deployed chatbots, virtual agents, mobile apps, intelligent robots and service applications over social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter using these emerging technologies.

Interestingly, there’s a growing demand of these types of software products and applications that are very specific to banking, insurance or financial services sector. In fact, this Singapore based fintech startup Active Intelligence (Active Ai) offers artificial intelligence (AI) based conversational banking services and solutions for the banking industry.

“Today, enterprises world over are moving away from the mobile first vision to AI first with the core focus on customer engagement and new customer experience (CX),” says Ravi Shankar, Co -founder and CEO, Active Intelligence (Active Ai) Pte Ltd.

Banks have tried to introduce mobile banking apps in recent years, but they haven’t been that much popular among customers, according to Shankar.

One of the reasons, why banking customers are struggling with mobile banking apps is because apps don’t come naturally to customers, says Shankar. “Hence it requires a different technology approach. And that’s where AI has a big role to play,” he adds.

For banks, mobile apps do provide an easy means to reach out a large customer base however managing apps remains a challenge. However, in comparison, bots for example, offers improved efficiency and value to banks as it provides a 24x7 support across application platforms, messaging interfaces, web or IoT devices.

“And once they learn, they will not make mistakes, unlike humans, which would require lots of training to handle large customer base,” explains Shankar.

“Beside the benefits, cost is definitely a big factor why banks today are leveraging AI based applications and tools,” he observes.

With the help of its innovation lab in Bangalore, the fintech has built its own IP backed enterprise platform Morfeus that helps banks to engage with their customers over unstructured micro-conversations and Triniti, which is an enterprise grade AI engine.

“Our AI first enterprise platform – Active.ai offers banking services conversations and helps them to engage with their customers. And in last 16 months, we have worked with Axis Bank in India and other banking and financial services organisations in the Asean region,” informs Shankar.

The robust enterprise grade AI engine is available on premise as well as cloud. It comes pre-trained, with data models of financial services such as retail, wealth, insurance, and corporate banking.

Active Ai’s rapid rise and recognition in the banking space compared to others has a lot to do with its three founders, which brings a deep understanding and engagement with the banking sector and puts a combined 70 years banking industry experience.

“In the past, we have worked with different banking organisation across geographies and markets, so we have a strong understanding across markets and not just India,” comments the former banker. Shankar has spent two decades in the banking industry and had worked with ABN AMRO, Yes Bank and other banking organisations.

The uniqueness of Active Ai’s conversational banking experience platform is the capability to easily integrate with multiple banking services across channels like text, voice, social media messaging platforms like Facebook messenger, WeChat, Line, websites, IVR, along with IoT devices like Amazon Echo and others.

“And that’s the future of customer interaction, engagement and experience. Using our AI stack banks can intelligently engage and provide a superior experience in serving the customers,” notes Shankar.

Going ahead, Shankar predicts that AI platform will run parallely and there will customer conversations using images, emoji and multiple other ways in the future. And in doing so, the startup has also formed partnership with major tech players like IBM, Microsoft and others.

Recently, it has tied-up with Infosys for its core banking platform Finacle. “Under a partnership we have deeply integrated our AI platform with Infosys’ core banking solution that would help banks with AI based services and customer experience,” informs Shankar.

More so, Shankar strongly believes in collaboration when it comes to AI. He says that the fintech industry operating in the AI space needs to work in collaboration with other technology players so to make it more impactful for businesses and enterprises.

“We need intensive collaboration and have partnered with IBM, Infosys, Microsoft and others to take the capabilities of our AI platform and products and integrate with their solutions. It enables us to share the limited technology knowledge that is out there around AI,” emphasizes Shankar.

The collaborative approach is very crucial for the AI industry’s growth, since there’s dearth of good talent today. “Most of the talent is in Silicon Valley and secondly, we need fintech talent to supplement AI stack which is specific to banking industry, which again is a competitive industry,” Shankar points out the challenges in the AI industry.

Although the AI industry is not very crowded, it is very specific in nature that makes it a bit complex. It is a multibillion dollar industry globally with huge opportunities. “AI has been around for the last 30 years, but enterprises very recently have started to leverage AI,” says Shankar.

Today, the fintech has around 40 people between Singapore, Bangalore and America. “Our vision is to have 100 million end-user customers in the next couple of years. We have a presence and operate in markets of North America, Europe, Japan, Asean along with India,” concludes Shankar.